Roma: eternity in one day

'I saw eternity the other night...' and her name was ROMA! 

Rome, the eternal city! I wasn't a huge fan of it the first time I visited, but now I'm in love! I did all of the following in one single day! Thousands of years of human history in a matter of hours.

The Colosseum was a must! We had an awesome tour guide for this and the Roman Forum. My last tour of both was terrible and our guide hated us! Francesca loved us, and we loved her! Probably the best (non-Gabriel) tour guide we've had on this trip!  

Francesca also walked us around the old Roman Forum. It was only raining a little, but just enough to scare all of the tourists away! The place was near empty, so my pictures came out much better than last time!

After the tour, a group of us decided to carry on with the adventures and to go see as much as possible within walking distance! We frist found ourselves at the Trevi Fountain. I've been told that there's a system to what wishes you wish in order for the magic to work. The first time to Rome and the fountain, you wish to return there (as I did in 2008). The second time you come to Rome and the fountain (aka, this time), you wish to find true love. The third time you come to Rome and the fountain, you're with your true love and you don't need a third wish. Who knows, I'm on track for this to come true!

After lunch, we stumbled upon the Spanish Steps completely by accident. We were looking for some friends that ate separately when we durned a corner and BAM! Spanish Steps in our face!

Our last stop of the day, before we nearly collapsed from walking all over Rome was the Pantheon. This was probably the coolest building I have ever been inside. I don't know why, but last time I was in Rome we skipped it. What a crime! Oh well, at least I got to enjoy it this time around! 

Siena for Gabe’s special day

Gabriel Fawcett (our guide, professor and friend) was born in Siena, Italy. Today, we visited his town of birth, on his birthday! It was a really fun experience for us to share with Gabriel. It was also the first time he’s returned to the place of his birth since he's become a Christian. The entire group laid hands on him in the town square and prayed for him for like 30 minutes. It was a moving experience for all of us, especially Gabe. (yes, there is an American football in his hand in that picture)

Siena has always been a favorite city for everybody in my Italian family that has been. Today, I finally understood why. This place was magical! We went inside their Duomo and I was in awe. Who knew that black and white stripes would look awesome inside of a cathedral! 

After the church, we climbed this partly completed (or maybe partly destroyed) arched wall that was the highest point of the city and overlooked the town and Tuscany around us! It was one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve seen on this trip. 

Florence: awesometown, world

My favorite city I have every been to in my life. And it’s even better than I remember it! This has been the city that I’ve compared every other city to on this trip. I’ve told a lot of people on this trip that, but when they ask why it’s kind of difficult to explain. I just love everything about it, but mostly I love the people. So many other cities are just packed with tourist after tourist. But even though Florence has tourists, its of a different sort. One, the median age of people visiting seems to by way younger. I guess there are so many people studying abroad there (like my sister Annalise did) or college kids like me visiting. Also, it seems like Italians love it there! I’d say the fast majority of the people I’ve interacted with in Florence are Italian. It just feels like a real, living, breathing, crazy Italian city, and I LOVE IT! 

I did everything one should do in Florence, and so much more! Saw the David, climbed the Duomo, walked along the Ponte Vecchio bridge, did’t go to the Uffizi this time around (don’t tell Gabriel, my art prof.), went to the leather market, ate awesome steak… but I also wandered, I explored, I got lost. I had hour long conversations with complete strangers, I watched football (both NFL and Serie A), danced the night away, drank the night away. It was an all around spectacular week.

It was by far one of the most fun weeks of the trip. Even though we had 2,000 word art paper due, a three page WWII paper due, and a 2,000 word technology paper to work on, I still managed to have a ton on fun in my favorite city in the world! 

Venezia!

Life has been so crazy the past 11 or so days that I’ve been in Italia! (hence me not updating my blog since the night I arrived in Venice). I don’t know where to begin... How about the beginning? That’s a very good place to start. (Sound of Music reference, Austria was rad). 

So my last post was about us arriving in Venice. Venice was so much fun! That city is beyond beautiful, it feels like it’s part of a different world. The only draw back of it, it’s 90% tourists, 10% locals (and they’re only there to profit off the tourists). It’s sad really, I wish I could have seen Venice 50 or 100 years ago. I did what I was told to do last time I was in Venice my by Euro History AP teacher Dugan Miller, I got completely lost (usually on purpose) almost every day we were there. Only then can you see the true beauty of Venice without the tourists surrounding you. It’s amazing how you can just take one turn off a noisy street, and it’s quiet. One more turn, and it’s absolutely silent. 

I love this town, but I’m much more of a big city guy.

my triumphant return to Italia

Today might have been one of the greatest days of my life. Definitely one of the greatest days of the trip. Our bus dropped us off a ways outside of Venice, and we got to take a bunch of small water taxis into the heart of the city (where our hotel is). This was a view of Venice that I've never seen before, it was unbelievable! 

I was here last during my sophomore year of high school with my European History AP teacher and some students for a spring break trip. This time around is under completely different (better) circumstances and I'm so stoked! Graham Fawcett, Gabe's dad, has met up with us again! Back to poetry in the most beautiful city in the world!

No words can describe how I feel being back, but I think my smile in the following pictures says it all. People have already noticed me change from the moment we crossed over the border in the Alps. My giant Italian family would be proud.

I'm finally back in Italy!

recreating pictures: 32 years later

I went to Salzburg on a mission today: to recreate a bunch of pictures from my mom's Europe Semester visit to the city in 1979. The first two are in the Gazebo that was used in the filming of The Sound of Music. Unfortunately they don't allow people into it anymore, so Erica and I had to improvise.

The fist photo the group named: "The Proposal"

1979

2011

The second was named: "The Marriage" (dang that was a short engagement.)

1979

2011

The last one is at the entrance to the gardens where the Von Trapp kids ran around singing one of those catchy songs.

1979

2011

Hi Anna

the alps at night

Last night I took some long exposure shots of the mountains above Mittersill. It was a beautiful night with only a few high clouds, but I could see back for what seemed like an eternity!

(I haven't edited these at all FYI)

8 hours later...

What I went to bed to:

What I woke up to: 

baby it's cold outside

Let me set the scene: I’m in the Austrian Alps, staying in a castle on a hill overlooking the tiny village of Mittersill. It been snowing on and off for the last three days we’ve been here. Last night, there’s a group of us watching Monte Python upstairs, and we suddenly see out the balcony that it is snowing like it’s never snowed before here! When it snowed earlier, it didn’t stick at this altitude, only just above us. But it was finally sticking last night, enough for us to have a massive snowball fight in the courtyard. I may or may not have hit one of my professors in the face with a snowball… my bad Ken! The snow persisted until we went to bed, and we woke up to a winter wonderland! It started to melt early as the sun rose, but it was so awesome! 

Austrian Countryside

We left Vienna with the first episode of ‘bad weather’ on this trip. I woke up to the sound of rain, stoked because I love rain! Then I realized it was a moving day, and we were all going to have to haul our luggage through the rain a few blocks to the bus. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, and we actually left within ten minutes of our goal for the first time! The rain persisted as we drove out through the Austrian countryside. We stopped at Melk Abby, a ridiculously Baroque building. We went on a tour of the abbey, and had a delicious lunch. The weather stayed just about the same throughout the afternoon, with only a few dry patches. 

Erica and I outside the chapel at Melk Abbey

We left the abbey and continued our journey towards the Austrian Alps. Our driver turn on the heater as soon as we got on the coach, and it got stuck on full blast. Within 20 minutes we were shedding clothes, and sweating. We opened the emergency doors on the roof, and eventually our driver just took a screwdriver to the heater and turned it off manually. 

Cooling off after the emergency sunroof was opened

The rain grew worse as we slowly gained altitude. We could see the snow on the mountains drawing nearer and nearer every mile. We turned a corner and everyone started yelling… SNOW! The ground was covered in it. We drove through a few small villages and it was so beautiful.

I realized we were starting to go downhill, and soon we were below snow level. We were only disappointed for a moment, then we turned another corner and saw or new residence… our castle: Schloss Mittersill. It’s a medieval castle on a hill that looks over the tiny town of Mittersill, and we have it all to ourselves for an entire week!!

Schloss Mittersill

apple

My dad worked for Apple for most of my early childhood. My oldest memories usually involve me playing with some of the original Apple PCs that my dad would bring home. As my sister Annalise put it, we learned how to type on a mac before we learned how to write. I was saddened with the news of Steve Job's death this morning. My friend Nick a few rooms down woke me this morning up screaming what had happened. The following is what my dad had to say about it:

Steve Jobs; visionary, revolutionary and driving force to create "Insanely Great" products. At Apple he exposed us to the finest things ever produced in order to inspire us to achieve things that went beyond just functional. Working at Apple during the first Jobs era early in my career drastically elevated my personal and professional standards of excellence. Well done Steve.

I later asked my dad what it was like to interact with Steve when they met on multiple occasions:

Yes, the impression he left on me was that he was a man who was determined and was a man of action. Talking with him or interacting with him was intense. He knew what he wanted and only spent enough time with you so you could get on board with him. Steve was probably different with friends but with those who worked for him he was all business and didn't waste any time with things that didn't matter.

It was as if he didn't think he had enough time in his life to do everything so he concentrated on the things most important to him. He did die young, but not that young. However he did seem to live like every day might be his last. I guess intensity was the general impression he left on me. I was 28 or so when I joined Apple and not very mature so I enjoyed Apple for all the good times it provided. Steve was 21 when he started Apple I think and I believe he matured very early. Kind of skipped his late teens and all of his 20's and went right into his 30's. 

Auschwitz: does God end here?

I don’t intend on posting many pictures of our visit to Auschwitz. Looking through them, I’ve realized that you cannot possibly get a sense of what it was like through images. They don’t do the unimaginable tragedy justice. I’ve talked with a few other photographers on this trip, and we’ve decided to be very selective about the pictures we post from that day. Most would be from the outside of the camps.

We visited two of the three camps collectively known as Auschwitz. First was Auschwitz II Birkenau, the death camp. This is the camp that most people think of when talking about Auschwitz. Visiting it was one of the most difficult moments of my life. We walked through the iconic gates and I stood in horror looking at the rows and rows of barracks surrounding me. It was a “perfect”, hot, sunny day. Gabriel led us through the barracks and train tracks, telling us stories of a few individual victims. We ended the morning at the gas chambers and crematoriums. The Nazi’s collapsed them before they fled to cover up their crimes, but you can still clearly see what they were. Gabriel talked us through the horrific details (that I’m not going to go into) of the Nazi’s process of mass extermination. From there we walked to a small memorial with plaques in every language spoken by those murdered at Auschwitz II Birkenau. 

This is the moment I completely lost it. It’s been said that the survivors of this terrible place lost their faith in God, and their faith in mankind. It was then that I understood why. It was then that i started to question my own faith in God, and my own faith in humanity. I wrote in my journal when we got on the bus for lunch: “I woke up this morning knowing in my heart that mankind is essentially good (but corruptible by Satan)… by 1pm I don’t think I can honestly believe that any more.” What I was thinking terrified me. I was questioning my faith in humanity, but I was also questioning my faith in God. I’ve worked a lot of this out in the days following Auschwitz, but it is still something that is deeply troubling me. The question that inevitably comes from visiting this place is “where was God??”

After a traditional Polish lunch, we drove to Auschwitz I. This is the concentration camp that existed long before the extermination camp was built. I didn’t think this part could be any more difficult than my morning at Birkenau, but I was wrong. We were lead around my Gabriel’s friend that only spoke German (Gabe translated). Since he is the only German speaking tour guide there, he does a lot of tours for former guards and Germans with family stories. Auschwitz I has all of the belongings that the Nazi’s took from the Jews. There were two things I saw in the course of ten minutes that I will never, ever forget. They will honestly haunt me until the day I die. The first sight was the seven tons of human hair. Just before (or sometimes just after) they exterminated the Jews, the Nazi’s would shave their heads. The hair was sold to industries in Germany to make carpet and socks… appalling. When the Nazis fled the camp in 1945, they left bags and bags of it. The hair that started off all different colors has now turned either brown or grey. Tragically, it is also quickly decaying. Within twenty years it will all be dust. The second sight that will haunt me was around 50,000 shoes (25k pairs) in one room, placed in small mountain sized piles on both sides. The real shock came when we were told that these represented only 4% of the victims of Auschwitz I and II. It hit me like a train the enormous scale of this genocide. 

The day I visited Auschwitz will be a day I will never forget. 30 September 2011 will always be in my mind. It was one of the most difficult and challenging days of my life, but I have already grown from it. Visiting that place is something everybody needs to do once in their lifetimes. It’s one thing to see pictures and video, it’s completely different seeing it in person. There is so much more that I’ve gotten from that one day, it wouldn’t be possible to ever explain it all. Maybe I’ll post more after I’ve processed this over some time. I don’t think I’ll ever stop processing that place. 

legacies

Matt Johnson, Charlotte Bryant, Sydney Vincent, Erica Guzman and me

The five of us share a very special connection: all of our parents went to Westmont together, and were (and still are) good friends. Now, 30 years later, the five of us are at Westmont together and are good friends! It's so awesome knowing that we will probably stay connected and close friends through the years like our parents have. 

Kreepy Krakow

Not gonna lie, Poland was kinda creepy. It didn’t hit me until the second day that we were actually in the same Poland that we’ve been learning about in class. Since France, we’ve constantly been in former Nazi controlled land, but it was a different feeling in Poland. It probably had to do with the fact that we went to Auschwitz. Day one in Poland we went on a walking tour of the castle and old town. The city is cool, but our tour was so boring. Gabriel didn’t lead this one (hence me not being interested). Instead it was lead a tiny grandma in purple. She was funny, but I honestly could’t care less about Krakow Castle and its ‘dragon’. We did climb the clock tower and touch the bell (apparently it’s good luck) so that was kinda cool. 

Krakow’s real life is in it’s club scene. Something like one third of the city population is made up of university students. This weekend was their first week back before the semester starts on Monday. There was a constant flood of music coming out of the underground cellars that all the clubs are in to escape the cold. On the last night in Poland, Gabriel took us out to two of his favorite spots. The first was a very local Polish pub, and the second was a crazy dance club. I’ll end with this: Europe Semester girls can dance.

Prague

“The most beautiful city outside Europe” is how Gabriel described Prague to me while we were on the train into the city, and defiantly I agree with him! The city was stunning and so full of life. We had some of the best accommodations we’ve had on this semester yet. It was called a hotel, but each room was more like a house. We were staying right in the center of town, next to the main bridge.

Let’s see, highlights with the Czechs. Well, we had another walking tour with Gabriel, so legit. The knowledge this guy has in his brain… unbelievable. We saw the castle and saw the cathedral and all that jazz. We had to unbelievable group dinners, Lebanese the first night, and traditional Czech the second. Gabriel showed us where a Nazi dude was semi-successfully assassinated. We ran the route he fled from the Nazi shooting him. 

We went on a “man tour” with Gabe and ended in this pub. We sat down for drinks and lunch, but quickly found out that nobody spoke english, and the menu was only in Czech. Gabriel could decipher four words from different choices: onion, fish, paprika, and rice. From that we ordered and I had really good cod (head and tail still intact). 

I climbed to the top of Prague’s mini Eiffel Tower on top of a huge hill overlooking the city and had the best view possible!